Japanese giant Sharp is “taking the lead” on a rumored $7 billion display manufacturing plant in the United States which its parent company Foxconn recently highlighted in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Make in America” call. Citing a person with knowledge of the plan, Reuters is reporting that the forthcoming facility may break ground sometime in the first half of 2017.
A game of cat and mouse between Apple and the Indian government continues with news Monday that the government has yet to make a final decision regarding concessions being sought by Apple to set up an iPhone manufacturing plant in the country. Tribune India is reporting that Ramesh Abhishek, a secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), told the media this morning that while Apple did submit certain demands for the government's consideration, a final decision has yet to be announced.
It's official: Taiwanese contract manufacturer Wistron will be assembling iPhones in a facility set up at Peenya on the outskirts of Bengaluru, The Times of India reported Friday. No timeline has been provided, but production is expected to begin in June. The Karnataka government issued a release yesterday in which regional IT minister Priyank Kharge welcomed Apple's proposal “to commence initial manufacturing operations” in the state.
According to Japanese outlet Nikkei Asian Review, iPhone manufacturer Foxconn's Chairman Terry Gou told journalists who attended his company's end-of-year corporate party that Foxconn is considering a joint investment with Apple topping $7 billion for a highly automated display facility in the United States.
It would eventually create 30,000-50,000 jobs.
As we reported this morning, iPhone manufacturer Foxconn and its Japanese subsidiary Sharp are considering setting up an $8 billion LCD panel production plant in the United States. According to another report, semiconductor maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) has also expressed interest in taking advantage of business-friendly incentives proposed by incoming U.S. President Trump.
As a reminder, TSMC currently churns out Apple-designed silicon for latest iOS devices and is also said to have landed a lucrative contract to build next-generation A11 chips for future Phones and iPads.
Apple's key suppliers—iPhone assembler Foxconn and its Japanese subsidiary Sharp—say that rumored plans calling for establishing an LCD manufacturing plant in the United States are “still on the table”. Company officials made that comment in response to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's “Make in America” call, Japanese outlet Nikkei reported Friday.
An unnamed Sharp executive told Nikkei that such a decision must be made “carefully”.
Apple's failed sapphire crystal manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona will be repurposed to produce server assembly cabinets for the Cupertino firm's global data centers, according to a notification published by the Federal Register and cited yesterday by Business Insider.
Apple already has authority to produce certain components for consumer electronics in a special zone that exempts it from customs duty payments, but now it's looking for approval from the Foreign-Trade Zones Board to produce “finished products and foreign status materials and components” in the Mesa factory.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has predicted that iPhone 8 will be switching to an all-glass design akin to iPhone 4 with a stainless steel metal frame rather than aluminum. Today, trade publication DigiTimes shed more light on the matter.
Quoting supply chain sources, the report states that Apple will adopt a stainless steel forging process for the new chassis frame instead of the traditional CNC machining process although the metal frame will need to be further refined by CNC machining.
Apple's contract manufacturer Foxconn is taking advantage of its acquisition of Sharp as the Japanese giant plans to set up an OLED production line in Zhengzhou, a city of six million people in an impoverished region of northern China, according to a report by Japan-based Nikkei that was cited Monday by trade publication DigiTimes.
Several analysts interviewed recently by The Wall Street Journal opined that iPhone 7's supposed lack of compelling features probably convinced many owners of the exploding Note 7 to opt for another high-end Galaxy handset, and not Apple's flagship phone.
Their remarks were corroborated today by supplier data collected by Japanese newspaper Nikkei Asian Review, which claims Apple is planning to cut iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus orders by ten percent starting in the first quarter of 2017 after they “sold more sluggishly than expected”.
iPhone manufacturer Foxconn continues to replace factory workers with industrial robots, called Foxbots. These machines take advantage of artificial intelligence to perform elaborate assembly work more efficiently than humans can. As of May 2016, Foxbots had replaced as many as 60,000 factory workers and now a new report from DigiTimes details progress the contract manufacturer has since made in terms of boosting automated production across its facilities in China.
Hedging its bets, Apple has apparently commissioned a third contract manufacturer to build iPhone 8 alongside established suppliers and longtime partners Foxconn and Pegatron. According to a Chinese-language report in the Economic Daily News newspaper, quoted by Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes, Apple supplier Wistron will get to build some of the future iPhone units.